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Disclaimers and Stuff

This is the personal site and weblog of Kevin Lawver and Jen Lawver. The views expressed on this site are our's and not those of our family, friends or employers.
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Dear Internet

You are upsetting me. Please stop using crappy old browsers. There is absolutely no excuse for using Netscape 6, Netscape 4.x, Safari 1.0, IE 5.5 or IE 5.0. They are all old, insecure, out-of-date, feature poor and tired. They are so so tired. Please retire them and get yourself a new browser. You know, one that renders pages correctly, that won’t crash on you, that’s actually supported by the company that released it, etc…
We should have a national holiday: Upgrade Your Browser Day. It could be a national day of nerd service where nerds go door-to-door offering to help people upgrade to the latest version of that person’s browser of choice. You want to use Netscape? Great! Let’s dump that ancient bug-filled copy of 6.0 and put you on 7.2 or 8.0! Opera lover? Please, let’s install 8.5! IE? No more 5.0’s or 5.5. Let’s get you a fresh (but still old, IE 7 can’t get here fast enough) copy of IE 6.
Yeah, I think this could work. We need browser missionaries. I could see the door approach now:knock, knock
“Hello, ma’am, we’re the neighborhood browser missionaries. Do you have any web browsers in the house?”
“Yes, I think we do…”
“Do you know what version you have? Have you checked recently for updates?”
“Well, no, I just use it.”
“Can we come in? We’d love to help you upgrade that old thing, and we’ll do it for free!”
I think it would work.

“Good afternoon. We’ve been sent to deliver a message of hope. No longer do you have to wonder if you are ever going to be happy. We are here to tell you that everyone can be happy. But, you can’t do it alone…you need help…”http://www.spreadfirefox.com

You know, the installer for ALL browsers could comfortably fit on a single CD-ROM.
Someone needs to press an AOL CD image that includes those browser installers. Then, AOL could just mail those out to the millions upon millions of people they mail ‘em to. Autorun on the CD could ask: “Install/upgrade [Netscape, IE, etc.]?” before starting the AOL installer.
Hey, the approach got some 25+ million people to install AOL, so it’s gotta work, right?